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The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) is investigating whether all hospitals have reported complete cases of Covid-19 after it emerged that one has reported hundreds of cases late.
The medical director, Dr. Tony Holohan, said his group had just learned of the report’s omission and was trying to establish the full facts.
He declined to say whether there would be consequences for the hospital (Covid-19’s immediate report is a legal requirement) and admitted that he did not know if contacts of the cases involved had been tracked.
The late reported cases account for more than half of the 426 new cases of the disease reported by Nphet on Thursday. By discounting these cases, the underlying trend shows a steady decline in new case numbers.
Nphet announced the death of 10 other patients at its briefing on Thursday. There have now been 1,506 Covid-19 related deaths in the Republic. The total number of cases is now 23,827.
Many of the cases reported late by the hospital date back to mid-March, but have only been reported to the Health Protection Surveillance Center, Dr. Holohan said.
“They piled up, we weren’t aware of them, and today it was reported in a group to add to the number we would have diagnosed over the course of the day.”
Nphet at its meeting on Thursday made recommendations on the planned easing of the restrictions on Monday, including proposals on the use of face covers in certain situations, which will be considered by the cabinet on Friday.
Reproduction number, a measure of the number of people each case infects, was stable between 0.4 and 0.6, as reported.
Professor Philip Nolan, chair of the Nphet epidemiological modeling group, said that all indicators of Covid-19 spread were declining, including the average number of new cases per day, the number in the hospital and in the ICU, and the number of deaths each day.
The average number of new cases was 600 per day in mid-April, less than 300 last week and an average of 172 in the past five days, Professor Nolan said.
The model developed to predict the pattern of the epidemic had predicted that cases would drop to 150 per day by the end of May, but this level has now been reached, so “we are a little better” than expected, he said.
The number of health workers who had died now is seven, an increase of two from last week.
When asked about the tensions over test targets that were revealed in a letter from HSE Chief Executive Paul Reid to Nphet last month, Dr. Holohan said everyone was working “at pace” and “under pressure” and that tensions would arise “from time to time”.
HSE Clinical Director Dr. Colm Henry said it would be “implausible” to say there was no stress “but we work together and work things out.”
Both HSE and Nphet were “completely united” in their strategy, he added.
An analysis of cases as of Tuesday shows that 57 were women and 43 percent were men. The median age was 48 years and 13% were hospitalized. A total of 7,123 cases were associated with health workers. Community transmission accounts for 60 percent of cases.
Of those who died from the disease, 86.7 percent had underlying conditions. Some 756 deaths were male and 750 female. The median age of deaths was 84 years and the mean was 82.
So far, 388 patients have been admitted to intensive care, of which 58 remain there.
A total of 438 groups have been reported in residential care facilities, an increase of six from the previous day, Dr. Holohan said. This included 250 in nursing homes, an increase of five.
Residential care centers represented 5,983 cases, while nursing homes only represented 4,655 cases.
7.5 percent of cases in residential care facilities and 5.3 percent in nursing homes were hospitalized, he said.
Starting March 19, close contacts will automatically be screened for the virus, Dr. Henry said.
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